Reviews with content warning for Deadnaming - Something That May Shock and Discredit You

Far from what Lavery describes as the generic "on-the-nose, po-faced transmasculine memoir I am trying not to write," this book is so wonderfully idiosyncratic that it's impossible to imagine anyone else writing it. Chapter 17's discussion of T4T energy (high-quality Gomez and Morticia Addams content!) is an utter delight, and the two-page chapter "And His Name Shall Be Called Something Hard to Remember" is unforgettable.

The subsequent chapter, "Pirates at the Funeral: 'It Feels Like Someone Died,' But Someone Actually Didn't," explores the bizarre way that cis people sometimes frame gender transition as death, and the consequences of that framing:

There is something willfully perverse about bereavement in the face of new life. My hope is not to squash or censor the complicated feelings of non-transitioning people, but to reconsider the direction of their sorrow. One might grieve and be prepared for something else, some new experience or sentiment to join one's grief, to mingle and ultimately sweeten it, add richness and support and texture. But to enter into mourning, to reenact the rituals of death, to borrow its vernacular, is to cut off understanding, curiosity, possibility, knowledge before they have a chance to flourish.I sometimes think of the phrase "deadnaming"as a capitulation to the sometimes-fatal language other people use about our transitions—an attempt to reroute the language of death, if we can't clear it away entirely. It is, I suppose, a useful-enough shorthand for "This name is not part of the project of life."

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